Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, honourable colleagues. I’d like to ask questions to the Minister of NTPC, Mr. Roland, about the incident that happened in Norman Wells in late December with the outage of power. I want to ask the Minister if he has had a briefing from his officials on an update as to some of the concerns that were stated in the January 7th letter to the Premier about the situation that happened in Norman Wells with the power outage.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Minister responsible for the NWT Power Corporation, Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member for that question. It gives me an opportunity to highlight a number of changes that we’ve made recently within the Power Corporation to better address the customers that we serve across the Northwest Territories. We’ve recently added -- as we’ve provided information across the Territories -- a new CEO, Mr. David Axford, to the Power Corporation, who is situated in Hay River. Also, we’ve brought on a new chair of the board of the Power Corporation and we’ve added a new member for the Sahtu to the board as well.
It was unfortunate that the incident occurred in Norman Wells. As the Member has pointed out, the generation of power happens through the Imperial Oil facility. We have backup and when the initial problems occurred we did have, I believe, the backup unit fired up, but we had problems in the transmission side. After reviewing, we had to send a team up to do that.
We are working with the community. I was informed that the CEO and the chief operating officer of the Power Corporation met with the town council on February 1st to deal with some of the issues that came out of the outage.
The Minister indicated there were several new personalities within NTPC. Hopefully this will satisfy residents in the Sahtu, especially the community of Norman Wells.
I want to ask the Minister if his office is going to respond in terms of having a meeting between himself and the town council of Norman Wells to look at some of the issues that were raised in the January 7th letter addressed to him about the response and role of NTPC.
As I have committed to Members of this House, when invited to a community we take all the opportunity we can to do that, so I’d be prepared to travel into the community with the Member to deal with this and other issues that may arise. I’m hoping that the initial meeting and the discussion that occurred with the CEO and the chief operating officer with the council has started a process in place of continuous updates and contact as we look towards the future. I am committed to travelling with the Member. At some point we can find our calendars aligned and travel into the Sahtu.
Certainly the Town of Norman Wells and myself are very pleased that the Premier/Minister is making commitments to come to Norman Wells to talk to the Town of Norman Wells on these issues.
I want to ask the Minister about the backup system and the adequacy of the power plant. Is that something that’s going to be looked into right away? I know there were discussions to see how fit this power plant could be of use to the community if the power does go out in the next week or so.
On the power generation side, I know the Power Corporation itself is involved with the parties on the conversion of natural gas to diesel for the community of Hay River, so we’re much more involved. With the new attitude of the CEO and the board, I think we will be much more proactive in working and engaging with our communities to find satisfactory solutions to power issues with our communities.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Mr. Speaker, can the Minister provide to the House if there is any type of analysis as to why NTPC does not have representation in the Sahtu, specifically a request to have one in Norman Wells? I know there are personnel in Inuvik, Fort Simpson and Fort Smith that have to fly into the region for situations like this. Can he bring that also to the attention of the regions, how we could have representation in Norman Wells to expand our support services to the communities?
The board and new CEO are looking at the operations of the Power Corporation. They’re taking into consideration a recent report that was done on the structure of the Power Corporation and looking at it from an operational side, again with more focus on customer relations. I look forward to the work that they’re coming up with. I know the board is engaged in that.
As for operations, I know that at times even the community of Inuvik, for example, with a number of serious outages, had to have staff flown in from other parts of our Territory to help deal with the outages and issues that arose from them. As the board looks at the operation’s structure, we’ll have to see what type of recommendations they may come out with and changes they may come out with in their operational structure. Of course, I will include Members in that and we’re trying to find some time that works for all parties to actually have the new chair and CEO meet with Members.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
